Later"Heh, it's great working with your husband, I mean, he knows we are making a piece of shit.""EXCUSE me?""Well, you said you weren't making Casablanca""Of course we aren't making Casablanca, they already made Casablanca!"

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal this week, Mr. Trump threatened to withhold the subsidy payments as a way to induce the Democrats to bargain with him.Continue reading the main storyFor now, Democrats are resisting and using his maneuver against him to energize their own party. And they warn that Mr. Trump will be blamed if the insurance markets collapse and people lose coverage next year.

Gimme what I want or I burn it all to ashes! I don't think this will work, but man Trump's petty cruel side emerges yet again.

The relentless drive by Kim Jong-un to assemble an arsenal, the propaganda and deception swirling around his progress, the hints of a covert war by the United States to undermine the effort, rather than be forced into open confrontation — were on vivid display this weekend.There was the parade in Pyongyang’s main square, with wave after wave of missiles atop mobile launchers, intended to convey a sense that Mr. Kim’s program is unstoppable. Then came another embarrassing setback, a missile test that failed seconds after liftoff, the same pattern seen in a surprising number of launches since President Barack Obama ordered stepped-up cyber- and electronic-warfare attacks in early 2014. Finally, there was the test that did not happen, at least yet — a sixth nuclear explosion. It is primed and ready to go, satellite images show.What is playing out, said Robert Litwak of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, who tracks this potentially deadly interplay, is “the Cuban missile crisis in slow motion.” But the slow-motion part appears to be speeding up, as President Trump and his aides have made it clear that the United States will no longer tolerate the incremental advances that have moved Mr. Kim so close to his goals.

Wait, wasn't the Cuban Missile Crisis the part of history where we almost started WWIII but with nukes? Aka the end of the world? Well shit, Trump might well be the last president after all then. I owe my hyperbolic Democratic friend a drink then. I shouldn't have bet that the US would continue to exist after Trump.

Yes, but keep in mind that the greatest and most vehement critic of the current actions and policies of the orange, shit-flinging baboon currently inhabiting the Whitehouse appears to be a minor media celeb called Donald J Trump.

Spoiler:

Giant Speck wrote:You're a demon! DEMON!!!!

Oregonaut wrote:CURSE YOU VILLAIN!!

PhoenixEnigma wrote:Jumble is either the best or worst Santa ever, and I can't figure out which. Possibly both.

Mother: He was trying to teach you a valuable life lesson, that sometimes you have to reach across the crowd and work with other people to get what is yours, and to trust in the goodwill of the community to help.Little brother: What about bad people in the community you talk about like mexicans and muslims?Mother: Those people didn't vote for him, dear.Little brother: I thought you said they did?Uncle: Dude's demented.Father: At least I got mah guns.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/5- ... n-results/The crazy good results from Kansas election has faded as the Georgia election hints that the Democratic edge is merely good. We'll know more after June, and if there are any more special elections.June election is expected to be a toss up with a big margin of error.

Georgia seems like it can be read in a lot of ways. Ossof didn't improve on Clinton's performance, but if you compare him against the congressional race last November instead of the presidential one, he looks absolutely golden. And Clinton's performance in Georgia was already a sharp turn from previous years. One could argue that just holding that shift down is an accomplishment.

But you could also argue that it eases fears among Republicans after Kansas and that over performance in California. At least the state of things seems less catastrophic than +20 margins all around for Democrats, which was kind of a silly notion to begin with.

Overall it looks like three special elections with two fantastic results for Democrats and one good but ambiguous one. It's still too small a sample size and too far from next November, but it's hard to read good news for the Republican party out of these.

Opus_723 wrote:Georgia seems like it can be read in a lot of ways. Ossof didn't improve on Clinton's performance, but if you compare him against the congressional race last November instead of the presidential one, he looks absolutely golden. And Clinton's performance in Georgia was already a sharp turn from previous years. One could argue that just holding that shift down is an accomplishment.

But you could also argue that it eases fears among Republicans after Kansas and that over performance in California. At least the state of things seems less catastrophic than +20 margins all around for Democrats, which was kind of a silly notion to begin with.

Overall it looks like three special elections with two fantastic results for Democrats and one good but ambiguous one. It's still too small a sample size and too far from next November, but it's hard to read good news for the Republican party out of these.

The next one is the Montana special election, and I think there's a senate election at the end of the year as well? The rule of thumb is to average the difference in vote margins. Each race is quirky, but combined, you'll get predictive value. To be honest though, Trump doesn't seem politically much worse than Bush post Iraq. Midterms are bad for the president's party anyway, I'm not seeing a huge Trump is awful vote that can't already be explained by midterm backlash.

sardia wrote:The next one is the Montana special election, and I think there's a senate election at the end of the year as well? The rule of thumb is to average the difference in vote margins. Each race is quirky, but combined, you'll get predictive value. To be honest though, Trump doesn't seem politically much worse than Bush post Iraq. Midterms are bad for the president's party anyway, I'm not seeing a huge Trump is awful vote that can't already be explained by midterm backlash.

That all sounds about right to me. I think a lot of Democrats are hoping the backlash to Trump will be of unprecedented scale, and I just don't see that. But I would point out that a "Bush post Iraq" backlash gave us Obama and a Democrat supermajority, if only briefly. So that would still be a big problem for Republicans.

Opus_723 wrote:That all sounds about right to me. I think a lot of Democrats are hoping the backlash to Trump will be of unprecedented scale, and I just don't see that.

I think part of this is that when Trump was early on signing executive orders and such there was such a backlash that smacked him in his easily bruised ego, that now he's being a lot quieter and not really taking the spotlight quite as much as he tried to in his first weeks. Travel ban being shot down twice, failure to pass ACA repeal/replace even with a friendly congress, and ongoing investigations over Russia connections have made this "running the country" job a lot harder and more unpleasant than he was bargaining for.

Trump not taking the center stage quite so often though means that he's not doing visibly terrible things with the office of the presidency (there's certainly terrible things going on, but they're not taking center stage and look more like backroom deals and politics as usual).

Without his horribleness on display in the center ring of the circus it's not generating the voter backlash that Democrats were expecting.

We're in the traffic-chopper over the XKCD boards where there's been a thread-derailment. A Liquified Godwin spill has evacuated threads in a fourty-post radius of the accident, Lolcats and TVTropes have broken free of their containers. It is believed that the Point has perished.

*one of* the most unfortunate things about Trump is that if he'd acknowledged he didn't have any sort of mandate for radical dismantling of Obama-era policies and just been a do-nothing president, quietly helping patch up the ACA, not getting in the way of the Paris climate agreement, etc., he'd have been pretty okay

that Kentucky coal mining museum switching to solar power is pretty rich, but it's a good glimmer that the economic realities are hard to ignore, even if you feign ignorance of climate change

kalira wrote:But your own butt is always in the past, because it's behind you.

sardia wrote:The next one is the Montana special election, and I think there's a senate election at the end of the year as well? The rule of thumb is to average the difference in vote margins. Each race is quirky, but combined, you'll get predictive value. To be honest though, Trump doesn't seem politically much worse than Bush post Iraq. Midterms are bad for the president's party anyway, I'm not seeing a huge Trump is awful vote that can't already be explained by midterm backlash.

That all sounds about right to me. I think a lot of Democrats are hoping the backlash to Trump will be of unprecedented scale, and I just don't see that. But I would point out that a "Bush post Iraq" backlash gave us Obama and a Democrat supermajority, if only briefly. So that would still be a big problem for Republicans.

It's not really backlash so much as it's the usual pattern in US politics, as it's been for the past few cycles. The electorate moves one way, the opposition mobilizes and swings it the other way again. And then the cycle repeats itself. A lot of it's due to the fact that we have only two serious political parties, and only around a third of us actually vote... it's not so much that the population is moving left and right, but rather that more people on the opposition side feel motivated enough to bother voting.

sardia wrote:The next one is the Montana special election, and I think there's a senate election at the end of the year as well? The rule of thumb is to average the difference in vote margins. Each race is quirky, but combined, you'll get predictive value. To be honest though, Trump doesn't seem politically much worse than Bush post Iraq. Midterms are bad for the president's party anyway, I'm not seeing a huge Trump is awful vote that can't already be explained by midterm backlash.

That all sounds about right to me. I think a lot of Democrats are hoping the backlash to Trump will be of unprecedented scale, and I just don't see that. But I would point out that a "Bush post Iraq" backlash gave us Obama and a Democrat supermajority, if only briefly. So that would still be a big problem for Republicans.

It's not really backlash so much as it's the usual pattern in US politics, as it's been for the past few cycles. The electorate moves one way, the opposition mobilizes and swings it the other way again. And then the cycle repeats itself. A lot of it's due to the fact that we have only two serious political parties, and only around a third of us actually vote... it's not so much that the population is moving left and right, but rather that more people on the opposition side feel motivated enough to bother voting.

Midterms are always bad, sure, but they can be mildly bad or really really bad, and that probably reflects on the president somewhat. If highly energized left-leaners are voting more than less-energized right-leaners, I'm comfortable calling that a "backlash." We know the midterms will almost surely swing against the Republican party, but to what degree is an interesting and important question, and the public opinion of Trump plays into that. (I think? Has anyone checked approval ratings against midterm results?)

Is the style of art or imagery used a reference to something? Like the women's rights movement or something? It has the look of that era, and white supremacists / the far right in general tend not to have many artistic sorts among them, so presumably the image was plagiarised from somewhere.

Mutex wrote:Is the style of art or imagery used a reference to something? Like the women's rights movement or something? It has the look of that era, and white supremacists / the far right in general tend not to have many artistic sorts among them, so presumably the image was plagiarised from somewhere.

...did you read the article?

kalira wrote:But your own butt is always in the past, because it's behind you.

Yeah, it's explained. The first image KE linked is "Rosie the Riveter" which was a WWII poster encouraging women to work in industry and subsequently became an iconic feminist poster. The original text is "Let's get to work."

kalira wrote:But your own butt is always in the past, because it's behind you.

Mutex wrote:Is the style of art or imagery used a reference to something? Like the women's rights movement or something? It has the look of that era, and white supremacists / the far right in general tend not to have many artistic sorts among them, so presumably the image was plagiarised from somewhere.

Lets call it what it is. Trolls be trolling.

Rosie the Riveter is considered one of the #1 Feminist posters of all time. So White Supremacists are using her as a symbol now out of irony. I think this is important to note: the subculture of White Supremacists is deep into modern internet culture and memes. They know what they're doing and they're aware of the nature of internet memes and how to seek attention.

By putting white-supremacist words onto a Feminist Poster, they're probably going to get more attention than they deserve. But I still feel like its important to share the story so that yall are aware of their techniques.

Mutex wrote:Is the style of art or imagery used a reference to something? Like the women's rights movement or something? It has the look of that era, and white supremacists / the far right in general tend not to have many artistic sorts among them, so presumably the image was plagiarised from somewhere.

KnightExemplar wrote:Rosie the Riveter is considered one of the #1 Feminist posters of all time.

Rosie the Riveter is actually not a feminist poster. She dates back to WWII and was used to help promote and mobilize civilians to support the war effort (alongside all those "Buy War Bonds" and "Uncle Sam Wants You" posters).

KnightExemplar wrote:Rosie the Riveter is considered one of the #1 Feminist posters of all time.

Rosie the Riveter is actually not a feminist poster. She dates back to WWII and was used to help promote and mobilize civilians to support the war effort (alongside all those "Buy War Bonds" and "Uncle Sam Wants You" posters).

If we're going to be pedantic here, Uncle Sam is from the War of 1812 and has evolved ever since.

But the point is that yes, it absolutely is a feminist symbol.

kalira wrote:But your own butt is always in the past, because it's behind you.

KnightExemplar wrote:Rosie the Riveter is considered one of the #1 Feminist posters of all time.

Rosie the Riveter is actually not a feminist poster. She dates back to WWII and was used to help promote and mobilize civilians to support the war effort (alongside all those "Buy War Bonds" and "Uncle Sam Wants You" posters).

In any case, its a woman because WW2 factories were staffed by women at that time. All (well... at least huge numbers of) the men were in combat. So the poster became a feminist icon, despite its WW2 roots. Indeed, a lot of modern feminism has to do with the fact that women entered the work force en-masse during WW2 and began to demand equal rights.

I guess we can say that white supremacists are trying to turn it into a white-supremacy poster / icon. Or at least, they're trolling and trying to piss people off with the concept of it.